1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a short message service and particularly, to a method for serving a broadcasting type short message just to a mobile terminal of the manufacturing company.
2. Background of the Related Art
Short Message Service (SMS) is a kind of radio data communication service which transmits a simple short message using a mobile telephone system. It is similar to a paging service in that a text-type message in the form of one or more characters or numbers is received through a radio network. However, in case of the radio pager, messages are transmitted almost at real time since the message is sent through a base station after a user inputs the message. Therefore, if the pager is in a location where the electric wave cannot reach or the power is off when the message is sent from the base station, the message cannot be received.
Unlike radio pagers, in the case of SMS, after the message is stored in an apparatus called a Short Message Center (SMC) or Short Message Service Center (SMSC), the message is transmitted according to the condition of the terminal of the user. More specifically, if the terminal of the user is normally operated and there is room in a traffic channel, the message can be received in several seconds or minutes. Also, by using the mobile telephone network, the SMS service is a two-way service which can both receive and send short messages. Since the size of the message that can be transmitted at once is very small for the short message, it is called as a short message and the length of the message varies slightly according to the mobile telephone system being used.
SMS service is divided mainly to a broadcasting-type information service and a point-to-point service. The broadcasting-type information service is used when information having identical contents such as weather or news is transmitted to a plurality of terminals simultaneously. On the other hand, point-to-point service is one where one-to-one transmissions take place with a specific terminal.
Initial SMS service was used to provide a user with notice that there is a message stored in the voice mail box or to transmit a simple message. However, currently, an interactive information service is provided where simple information can be searched using a terminal and information is transmitted in two directions. Most recently, internetworking has been used. In this context, as the number of users of high-speed exclusive lines subject to flat-rate tariffs increases, the service for transmitting the SMS message through an inter-network becomes more attractive from the users' standpoint. At the initial stage, since each mobile communication service company freely provided the SMS transmission service through the inter-network, the service could be used by connecting to a service home page without additional cost.
However, as the service is increasingly abused for sending spam messages, and accordingly a load of the system is increased, mobile communication service companies have begun to limit transmission of the SMS through the inter-network. Therefore, only users, who are subscribers of the corresponding mobile communication service or who are registered as members, are permitted to send messages to users who use the same communication service.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a conventional radio data communication system. This system includes a Short Message Entity (SME) 100 which is a processor for serving a broadcasting-type short message (SM) provided from the terminal manufacturing company; a Short Message Service Center (SMSC) 200 for storing the transmitted short message; a Home Location Register (HLR) 300 for checking information relating to the subscriber of a mobile terminal; a Visitor Location Register (VLR) 400 for checking the current location of the receiving side mobile terminal; a Mobile Switching Center (MSC) 500 and Base Station (BS) 600, for transmitting the received broadcasting-type short message to the next system; and a Mobile Terminal (MS) 700 for receiving and serving the broadcasting type short message. Broadcasting-type short messages include weather information, stock information or news information.
A method for serving broadcasting-type short messages to a mobile terminal 600 in a conventional radio communication system will now be described with reference to FIG. 2. The method begins with an information provider inputting a broadcasting-type short message provided by the terminal manufacturing company into the SME (S100). The short message entity 100 encodes the inputted short message to transmit the message to the SMSC 200, and then the encoded broadcasting-type short message is transmitted to the SMSC 200 (S110–S120).
The SMC 200, which received the broadcasting-type short message, transmits a terminal subscriber checking requesting signal to the HLR 300 (S130). The home location register 300, which receives the signal, transmits a subscriber checking signal of the MS 700 to the SMSC 200 (S140). The SMSC 200, which received the terminal subscriber checking signal, transmits a terminal location checking requesting signal to the VLR 400 to check the location of the MS 700 (S150). The VLR 400, which received the signal, checks the current location of the terminal and transmits the current location signal of the terminal to the SMSC 200 (S160).
The SMSC 200, which received the current location signal of the terminal, transmits the received broadcasting-type short message to the MSC 500 (S170). The MSC 500 transmits the received broadcasting-type short message to the BS 600 covering an area where the current MS is located (S180). The BS 600 then transmits the received broadcasting-type short message to the MS 700 through a forward channel (S190).
A traffic channel and paging channel exist between the BS 600 and MS 700 in the forward direction and an access channel exists in the reverse direction. In case the BS 600 transmits the broadcasting-type short message to the MS 700, the broadcasting-type short message is usually transmitted through the paging channel. However, in case the MS 700 is busy, the broadcasting-type short message is transmitted through the traffic channel. Also, the access channel, which is a reverse direction channel, is used to transmit a message transmission checking signal from the MS 700 to the BS 600.
The MS 700 which received the broadcasting-type short message, transmits the message transmission checking signal to provide notice that the broadcasting-type short message was transmitted without error to the SMSC 200 through the BS 600 and MSC 500 (S200–S220). The MS 700, which sent the message transmission checking signal, restores the received broadcasting-type short message and displays the message on a liquid crystal display unit (not shown) of a terminal (S230).
Conventional short message service (SMS) systems have at least one significant drawback. Since the broadcasting-type short message, which is provided by an inter-network site of a general terminal manufacturing company, is served to the mobile terminal of other terminal manufacturing companies as well as the MS 700 of the terminal manufacturing company, the MS 700 of the terminal manufacturing company cannot receive the service of information about its own terminal or the broadcasting-type short message.